1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to the dispensing of solid members having extended rigid projections, particularly electrical connectors, which are packaged in a flexible substrate assembly by inserting the extending projections into a surface of a continous flexible support sheet. which is folded in a boustrophedon pattern, or wound about a reel.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Electrical connectors are mass produced by positioning on insulative housing, generally a plastic rectangularly shaped member, automatically at various locations along an assembly line for pin insertion and other machine accomplished steps until the electrical connector is in its final manufactured form. Once the electrical connector is completed, the connectors are automatically conveyed to a completed connector hopper positioned to receive the connectors from a conveyor so that the completed connectors fall one by one into the hopper where they fall upon each other. The completed connectors falling upon each other sometimes cause damage to the extending pins or conductors such as by causing some of the plated-on highly conductive metal to be scraped away from the conductors or pins or by bending the pins.
The connectors are manually removed from the hopper, one by one, inspected and manually packaged. Packaging the connectors can be done in bulk by filling a plastic bag or other suitable container with anumber of connectors in contact with each other in a random manner, but bulk packaging generally is unsuitable because many of the connectors are damaged during transport. Another more time consuming and expensive method of packaging connectors has been by manually aligning the connectors in layers in a suitable container, such as a cardboard box, to minimize the connector contact during storage. A layer of compressible material sometimes is disposed between each layer of hand packed connectors to minimize the damage to the connectors during transport.
Recently, the assignee of this application has packaged connectors by aligning the connectors longitudinally in plastic tubes so that the connectors come into contact with each other only at plastic housing ends so that the conductors or pins extending from the connector housings do not contact each other during transport. However, this is a relatively expensive method of packaging, and requires that the plastic tubes have a cross sectional configuration corresponding to that of the connectors contained therein.
The assignee of the present invention has therefore developed yet another packaging system in which the extending rigid projections are inserted into a flexible sheet material which is provided as a continuous web. This packaging assembly, described in assignee's U.S. patent application Ser. No. 597,637 filed Apr. 6, 1984 provides a packaging technique which is readily adapted to connectors and other articles of manufacture of varying sizes. The flexible substrate, having a plurality of connectors retained thereon, can be disposed in a stacked array in a shipping carton, or may be wound about a shipping reel to provide dense, highly efficient packaging arrangement. There is a need, however, to provide an efficient apparatus for dispensing components contained on the flexible substrate, in a manner which is compatible with current mass production equipment. In particular, the components must be dispensed from the substrate assembly at a rate which meets the throughput of todays mass terminating equipment. Also, a technique for dispensing the components, which preserves their orientation when loaded into the flexible substrate, is also required.